In a primary, a navy choose at Guantánamo Bay on Friday crossed into the safety zone containing the wartime jail and inspected a former C.I.A. “black website” facility on the middle of a dispute over the taint of torture in the Sept. 11, 2001, case.
It was a noteworthy second within the arc of the two-decade historical past of the Guantánamo trials. No conflict courtroom choose had earlier than made the five-mile journey to take a look at the detention operations, the place the navy maintains the one recognized, still-intact remnant of the community of abroad prisons that the C.I.A. operated from 2002 to 2009.
However Col. Matthew N. McCall, the choose, is edging towards a call on whether or not the accused mastermind of the assaults, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and three co-defendants voluntarily confessed to conspiring within the assaults of their fourth yr of detention, beneath questioning by F.B.I. brokers at Guantánamo jail.
And the jail website he visited, referred to as Camp Echo, has performed a central however covert function within the case. From 2003 to 2004, the C.I.A. saved 5 prized prisoners there, close to the jail amenities however out of attain of the Worldwide Purple Cross. It was a part of its secret abroad community that hid about 120 “high-value detainees” in such far-flung websites as Afghanistan, Thailand and Poland.
In April 2004, the company closed the black website at Guantánamo and moved these 5 prisoners to different secret websites, on the recommendation of the Justice Division, to keep away from a looming U.S. Supreme Courtroom choice later that yr that granted detainees at U.S.-controlled Guantánamo Bay entry to attorneys.
After President George W. Bush ordered Mr. Mohammed and 13 different C.I.A. prisoners be moved to Guantánamo in September 2006 to face trial, federal brokers used the identical portion of Camp Echo to acquire ostensibly lawful confessions by what the prosecutors referred to as “clear groups.”
At difficulty now’s whether or not statements the lads made in 2007 are admissible on the eventual trial of Mr. Mohammed and the three males who’re accused of being his accomplices in serving to the 19 hijackers who took half within the Sept. 11 assaults.
Prosecutors contemplate these interrogations essentially the most vital proof within the capital case that has been mired in preliminary hearings since 2012. They argue that the statements have been voluntary, and so could be admissible.
Protection attorneys argue that, by 2007, Mr. Mohammed and the others have been conditioned by way of years of torture, solitary confinement and fixed C.I.A. debriefings that they have been helpless however to reply questions on demand.
Army judges have usually stayed away from the detainee operation, which at present holds 30 prisoners. Judges have summoned commanders to courtroom to reply questions and attorneys have supplied images of jail circumstances as courtroom proof.
Legal professionals for one of many defendants, Ammar al Baluchi, proposed the sector journey to the choose, who spent lower than 20 minutes inspecting the compound of wood huts containing metal cells which are cut up in two.
One half has a metallic pallet for a sleeping mat, bathe, sink and bathroom, additionally manufactured from metallic, Alka Pradhan, Mr. Baluchi’s lawyer, stated in courtroom Friday to orient the choose earlier than his go to. The opposite half was arrange as an interrogation room and has linoleum and a bolt within the flooring, the place a detainee’s ankle is shackled throughout authorized conferences nonetheless held there.
“On data and perception,” she stated, there additionally was “a shackle level on the ceiling” for a time. However she didn’t say when.
In a single portion of Camp Echo, the place reporters have visited, the wood huts have home windows. However huts within the portion the place the C.I.A. prisoners have been held and interrogated don’t have any pure gentle — except the outer door is left open.
Ms. Pradhan stated the tour was meant to help the protection crew’s argument that Mr. Baluchi thought of the interrogation in 2007 to be one other cease in his odyssey of torture by way of the black websites. Interrogators testified that they shared meals from McDonald’s and chatted with him.
However Ms. Pradhan stated that merely being there, in a website much like earlier black websites the place he was crushed, shackled nude and disadvantaged of sleep, “triggered an intense concern in him” that left him no selection however to inform his interrogators what they wished to listen to.
Colonel McCall left his black gown on the courthouse and drove himself and an aide to the checkpoint that controls entry to the jail complicated, a 15-minute trip previous an Irish pub, McDonald’s and a bowling alley that serves the bottom of about 5,000 residents — most of whom have by no means been allowed contained in the jail zone.
In 2019, the U.S. authorities declassified the truth that a portion of Camp Echo had been a black website at Guantánamo, however protection attorneys had been conscious of that nationwide safety secret for years. Three defendants within the capital circumstances instructed their counsel that that they had been there earlier than.
One in all them, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is accused of orchestrating Al Qaeda’s suicide bombing of the united statesS. Cole destroyer off Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000, within the longest-running death-penalty case at Guantánamo Bay.
Final yr, the navy choose in that case, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., threw out the statements Mr. Nashiri made to federal interrogations at Echo in 2007, as derived from his years of torture by the C.I.A.
“The F.B.I. interview in 2007 really occurred in the identical complicated — and maybe even the identical cell,” he wrote.
